Bruce Arthur: The Maple Leafs are playing the Gavin McKenna game just right. Nikita Kucherov would get in the way - Toronto Star

The 18-year-old McKenna has been more of a third-liner than a first-liner, and that’s fine.

 No. 1 draft pick Gavin McKenna has 11 points in 16 games despite ranking eighth among Maple Leafs forwards in ice time at just under 14 minutes per game.

Bruce Arthur is a columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur.

VANCOUVER—The one time you really noticed Gavin McKenna on Saturday night was one of the first times he touched the puck, and his adopted hometown of Vancouver roared. The No. 1 pick from Whitehorse had his family in town, and he came to some Canucks games growing up. It was as close to a homecoming as he could manage.

“To play in that barn, and play against that team, is pretty cool,” said McKenna after Toronto’s 4-2 win.

Gavin McKenna and Elias Pettersson get into it, and McKenna's family in attendance was loving it 😂 https://t.co/j9puqanZ5T

McKenna started the game on the Maple Leafs’ top line with Auston Matthews. He was replaced by William Nylander after just two minutes of five-on-five time together, and after that Toronto dominated the poor tanking Canucks enough in the second period to win. McKenna did some good work with Colton Sissons and Dakota Joshua, didn’t make mistakes and didn’t stand out. The 18-year-old McKenna has been more of a third-liner than a first-liner this season, and that’s fine.

Still, the No. 1 pick has 11 points in 16 games despite ranking eighth among Leafs forwards in ice time at just under 14 minutes per game; his three-point night in Seattle was clearly a season highlight, despite the loss. Nearly half those points have come on the power play, where the team trusts him, while five-on-five remains a work in progress. Different linemates, new opponents, different cities. It’s all a learning curve, right?

“Yeah, 100 per cent,” said McKenna. “You’ve got to learn how to play in different situations, and for me ... when you’re on one line you could have a different role, and when you’re on the next it might be a whole different change. So for me, it’s been just trying to stay simple no matter whose line I’m on. Just sticking with it and trying not to turn over the puck too much.”

McKenna, of course, is not a simple player. His spinarama genius, slaloming attacks and daring sorties that helped define much of his pre-NHL resumé have been, naturally, few and far between. But that’s the balance that every great offensive player has to find. As Ken Hitchcock once said of Sidney Crosby, he looks at a 20/80 play and sees a 50/50 play, but anyone short of Crosby might not be so lucky. McKenna has tried to cut down on turnovers, and one way to do that is to spend less time on the tightrope, as it were. It’s tricky.

“Yeah, there’s times to do it and there’s times to not,” said McKenna. “I think that’s part of the learning process is learning when to make those plays.

“I mean, it all depends on the time of the game as well. You know, late in the third, up a goal, you probably can’t make that play and risk it, but there is times in the game where I’m willing to make that play and you know, sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it won’t. That’s just kind of my style of hockey.”

“Those players with so much skill, in the end they get a little bit more rope, we all know that ... but he’s finding his way as an NHL player, and then you learn when to manage it and when not to, and that’s what he’s going through right now,” says Leafs coach Jim Hiller. “Those are the decisions you make in the moment, and the coach can’t make them and your linemates can’t make them. You have to make them.”

This team isn’t built for McKenna to be a centrepiece, either. Matthews has 11 goals and 24 points in 16 games, and is on pace for a career-high 123 points in these early days. Nylander has 10 goals and 21 points, and he’s on pace for what would be his first 100-point season. The injured Kirill Marchenko, 26, has been a point-per-game force. John Tavares will be back.

And Saturday night, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported reigning Hart Trophy winner Nikita Kucherov would consider trades to both Toronto and Montreal, after failing to come to a contract extension with Tampa and demanding a trade.

It has been reported the 33-year-old Kucherov is asking for a six-year deal at $20 million per season, and that would require moving a lot of furniture around. But even if Toronto could add another aging high-end forward — and that’s far from obvious — should they? Adding Kucherov would be fascinating, but among other implications it would likely further reduce McKenna’s offensive opportunities. That said, this is an older team that woke up with the 11th-best point percentage in the East on Sunday morning, despite the win in Vancouver Saturday night. Going all-in could be appealing.

It’s a strange marriage of an aging team and a young star in the making, and as tempting as Kucherov could be, it’s hard to imagine it being worth the cost. Either way, the development of Gavin McKenna has to remain this organization’s top priority, and one hopes the Leafs can afford to be patient. And that he can, too.

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Bruce Arthur is a columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur.